How New York City's 50-year-old Landmarks Preservation Act prevents tomorrow's great architecture

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<p><img alt="Columbia University&#x2019;s campus once bordered the corner of 49th Street and Madison Avenue" height="262" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/reasontv2.jpg?h=262&amp;w=250" title="|||" width="250" style="float: right;" />Once upon a time, New York City's builders blithely turned spectacular monuments into dust. Henry James complained about Manhattan's "restless renewals," but in the old days nostalgia was for writers and poets. Developers were preoccupied with building the future.</p>
<p>This ethos of creative destruction allowed New York to become the world's pre-eminent city. And then, on April 19, 1965, Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed the Landmarks Preservation Act. The law made it illegal to destroy any structure that the city's planning elite deem too important not to save. Today 28 percent of the buildings in Manhattan, and more than 33,000 structures citywide, may as well be encased in a life-sized historical diorama.</p>
<p>To illustrate the damage done by this law, let's imagine that the Landmarks Act had been passed not in 1965 but in 1865, when the spire of Trinity Church still towered over Lower Manhattan. Modern New York wouldn't exist.</p>
<p>Consider Henry Hardenbergh's original Waldorf-Astoria, an architectural masterpiece and Manhattan's leading luxury hotel. If the Landmarks Commission had been around in the Jazz Age, surely it would have protected this great structure—and then it never could have been torn down to build the Empire State Building, which occupies the exact same spot.</p>
<p>If the Landmarks Commission had been around to save architect Stanford White's majestic Madison Square Garden, the second of four structures with that name, Cass Gilbert's New York Life Insurance Building couldn't have replaced it. Forget about the hustle of Midtown Manhattan; the entire block between 49th and 50th Street, from Madison to Park Avenue, would still be home to Columbia University's pre-1897 campus. The old London Terrace apartment building wouldn't have cleared a path for the new London Terrace apartment building. Former Mayor Philip Hone's luxurious townhouse would still stand in the Woolworth Building's footprint. And we might still have the old Madison Square Presbyterian Church instead of the celebrated Met Life Tower.</p>
<p>The Landmarks Commission not only protects individual buildings, but also 114 districts, meaning entire neighborhoods are essentially frozen in time. Manhattan's Upper West Side became a landmark district in 1990, but what if it had earned that distinction in 1890, to preserve its Gilded Age character? Hulking apartment buildings never would have replaced the distinguished brownstones and mansions that once characterized this area. The district certainly would have been expanded one block west to include the Apthorp House, which quartered General Washington, among other colonial bigwigs, and would still stand near 90th Street and Columbus Avenue.</p>
<p>And yes, before landmarking plenty of great buildings were replaced by plain-Jane skyscrapers. But that's also part of how cities grow and evolve. Would New York really be better off if Temple Emanu-El still stood right off Times Square?</p>
<p>In 1847, native New Yorker Washington Irving reflected with nostalgia on growing up in a city that was "a mere corner" of what it had become, and that corner "all changed, pulled to pieces." The 50th anniversary of the Landmarks Preservation Act is an opportunity to mourn the opposite: all the invisible buildings that will never exist because of a misguided law. What if an earlier generation had outlawed the rise of skyscrapers and the spread of asphalt pavement? Washington Irving would still feel right at home.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/KI2YL4swJvs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/bulldozing-the-futureWhy Does Cadbury Chocolate Taste Worse In America?tag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489842015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Scott Shackfordhttp://reason.com/people/scott-shackford

An overzealous FDA and a bitter trademark battle keep British expats from enjoying their favorite sweets.

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<p><img alt="A Cadbury Creme Egg" height="210" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/CadburyEgg.jpg?h=210&amp;w=280" title="||| Wikipedia commons" width="280" style="float: right;" />The average American probably knows Cadbury as the source of the sugar-rush-inducing Creme Eggs that hit grocery store shelves around Easter. But to the British, the company is known for so much more. Cadbury is a top chocolate manufacturer in the United Kingdom, with a host of popular treats for sale.</p>
<p>The rights to produce and distribute Cadbury products stateside belong to Hershey's, which bought out the British company's U.S. operations in 1988. But the chocolate made under the Cadbury brand in America is different from the chocolate made by Cadbury in the United Kingdom. Brits living in the states know it, and many of them don't particularly like it. They say the American version tastes "like shit" and "like spit-up," and even, in one case, that it smells "like stinky feet," according to an article in <em>Vanity Fair</em>.</p>
<p>Hershey's is less than pleased with the nasty descriptions British expats have been using. Contacted by Pennsylvania's <em>Patriot-News</em>, a company spokesman complained, curiously, that these subjective descriptions are "factually wrong." He said that Hershey's uses the same formula developed by Cadbury in the United States before the acquisition, and that the company sources many of its ingredients from Cadbury and has them shipped over from the British Isles.</p>
<p>Protests to the contrary notwithstanding, the ingredients in Cadbury chocolate items produced on opposite sides of the Atlantic are demonstrably different. One big reason for that is a regulation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A layperson might think the subjectively superior flavor of British Cadbury bars comes from better cocoa or more milk. The secret is actually vegetable oil, which the FDA will not allow to be added to anything that will then be labeled "milk chocolate." In the U.S., only cocoa butter may be used. Not so in the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>In 2008, Hershey's actually changed some of its own chocolate offerings to taste more like Cadbury's, switching out cocoa butter for vegetable oil and altering the labels to comply with FDA demands. Some American candy critics responded with accusations that the company was trying to dilute the "definition" of chocolate and had made the change to save money. The website <em>Consumerist</em> called the resulting product "fake chocolate." Hershey's, back then, attempted to argue that consumers preferred the vegetable oil substitution—inadvertently previewing the point that fans of the original Cadbury products would end up arguing.</p>
<p>In any case, Cadbury chocolates produced in this country are not the same as those produced in Britain. As a result, there was a modest market in the United States for original, imported Cadbury products. But in early 2015, Hershey's successfully enforced its trademark, prohibiting importers from bringing British Cadbury products into the United States. From now on, your Creme Eggs will have to be locally sourced, so to speak.</p>
<p>Both <em>The New York Times</em> and <em>Vanity Fair</em> sought out the same British goods shop in their coverage of the chocolate war, Carry On Tea &amp; Sympathy in Greenwich Village, New York. Store owner Nicola Perry was more than willing to express her distaste of the Hershey's version of the brand, telling <em>The New York Times</em>, "I'd never sell it in my store."</p>
<p>Outraged fans are signing online petitions and threatening a Hershey's boycott. But so far the company is digging in. Legally if not morally, Hershey's is in the right on two fronts: It owns the rights to distribute products labelled "Cadbury" in this country, and its milk chocolate offerings are in compliance with FDA strictures. Those imported from Britain, sadly, are not.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/pbOPqwoZPq8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/why-does-cadbury-chocolate-tasContributorstag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489792015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00
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<p><img alt="Gustavo Arellano" height="150" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/cont-arellano.jpg?h=150&amp;w=150" title="Ask a Mexican ||| Gustavo Arellano" width="150" style="float: left;" />Gustavo Arellano is the editor of <em>OC</em> <em>Weekly</em>, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, where he delights in "exposing fake libertarians, making fun of the real ones for loving Ayn Rand too much, and watching Mexican libertarians take over the county, one taco truck at a time." He's also the author of the award-winning syndicated column "¡Ask a Mexican!" In "Drop That Snack!" on page 18, the 36-year-old Arellano explores the way municipal nanny-statism limits innovation (and tastiness) in the marketplace for food.</p>
<p><img alt="Scott Shackford" height="150" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/cont-shackford.jpg?h=150&amp;w=150" title="||| Scott Shackford" width="150" style="float: left;" />In "Why Does Cadbury Taste Worse in America?" (page 35), <strong>reason</strong> Associate Editor Scott Shackford, 43, unpacks how government regulations are keeping certain chocolate treats out of the hands of consumers. In "Battlefield: Cake" (page 76), he explains why florists and photographers have been sanctioned for refusing to participate in same-sex weddings but a baker can't be compelled to decorate a cake with text that says homosexuality is a sin. Shackford, who is gay, says that if he ever decides to get married, "the ceremony will be held at Disneyland, which decided to accommodate gay weddings years ago in response to cultural and market forces, not government demand."</p>
<p><img alt="Nick Sibilla" height="150" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/cont-sibilla.jpg?h=150&amp;w=150" title="||| Nick Sibilla" width="150" style="float: left;" />Institute for Justice writer (and former <strong>reason</strong> intern) Nick Sibilla, 25, takes local governments to task for criminalizing home gardens in "Turf War" (page 26). Sibilla says the economic liberty litigation firm where he works "is filled with so many amazing, talented, and whip-smart people who are fighting every day to make America a freer place," including for front-yard vegetable cultivators.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/LguFV8e4qVo" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/contributorsWhen Your Records Are Not Yourstag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489782015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Jacob Sullumhttp://reason.com/people/jacob-sullum

Two cases highlight the precariousness of privacy.

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<p><img alt="personal records" height="210" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/persrecords.jpg?h=210&amp;w=280" title="|||" width="280" style="float: right;" />In May a federal appeals court said police do not need a warrant to look at cellphone records that reveal everywhere you've been. Two days later, another appeals court said the National Security Agency (NSA) broke the law by indiscriminately collecting telephone records that show whom you call, when you call them, and how long you talk.</p>
<p>That looks like one victory for government snooping and one defeat. But both decisions highlight the precariousness of privacy in an age when we routinely store huge amounts of sensitive information outside our homes.</p>
<p>The Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures" of our "persons, houses, papers, and effects." But the Supreme Court says it does not protect our papers once we entrust them to someone else.</p>
<p>In a 1976 case involving bank records, the Court declared that "the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed." Three years later, in a case involving phone records, the Court reiterated that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties."</p>
<p>This dubious "third-party doctrine," enunciated before the Internet existed and mobile phones became ubiquitous, was crucial to the outcome of a case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in May. The court said an armed robber named Quartavius Davis had no constitutional grounds to object when the FBI linked him to crime scenes with cellphone location data that it obtained without a warrant.</p>
<p>The court's logic was straight­forward: Those records did not belong to Davis; they belonged to MetroPCS, his mobile phone company. So even though they revealed everywhere he went over the course of 67 days, he had no reasonable expectation that the information would remain private.</p>
<p>Dissenting Judge Beverly Martin noted that the majority's reasoning invites even bigger intrusions. "Under a plain reading of the majority's rule," she said, "by allowing a third-party company access to our e-mail accounts, the websites we visit, and our search-engine history—all for legitimate business purposes—we give up any privacy interest in that information."</p>
<p>That means the government can find out what we watch on YouTube, what we look up on Wikipedia, what we buy on Amazon, and whom we "friend" on Facebook or date via Match.com—"all without a warrant." In fact, Martin noted, "the government could ask 'cloud'-based file-sharing services like Dropbox or Apple's iCloud for all the files we relinquish to their servers."</p>
<p>The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit also noted the privacy threat posed by such data grabs in its ruling against the NSA's mass collection of phone records. But that decision was based on Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which the court said did not authorize the NSA program, contrary to the Obama administration's position. The ruling, which came out amid the congressional debate over reauthorization of Section 215, seemed to mean that the NSA could no longer use the provision to collect everyone's phone records even if Congress renewed it unchanged.</p>
<p>That outcome, while welcome, leaves unresolved a deeper issue that the 2nd Circuit mentioned: "whether the availability of information to telephone companies, banks, internet service providers, and the like, and the ability of the government to collect and process volumes of such data that would previously have overwhelmed its capacity to make use of the information, render obsolete the third-party records doctrine." Until the Supreme Court grapples with that issue, such highly revealing and deeply personal information will have only as much protection as legislators decide to give it.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/kK263Z16VpA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/when-your-records-are-not-yourDive Into the Deep Webtag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489752015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Brian Dohertyhttp://reason.com/people/brian-doherty
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<p><img alt="Alex Winter" height="182" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/awinter.jpg?h=182&amp;w=200" title="||| Alex Winter" width="200" style="float: right;" />Alex Winter, best known for portraying Bill opposite Keanu Reeves' Ted in the 1989 classic <em>Bill &amp; Ted's Excellent Adventure</em>, has long been fascinated by electronic communities. He even directed a documentary, <em>Downloaded</em> (2012), on filesharing. His latest documentary, <em>Deep Web</em>, premiered on the Epix channel in late May. It tells the story of Silk Road, a website that flourished from 2011 until 2013, when the feds shut it down.</p>
<p>Silk Road was a platform for buying and selling mostly illegal items. Earlier this year its alleged creator, Ross Ulbricht, was found guilty in federal court on various charges related to running the site. In early May, Senior Editor Brian Doherty spoke with Winter about the film.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Are you telling a story with an end—Silk Road gone—or one just beginning?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> Of course it's just the beginning. The parallels between Silk Road and Napster are striking. You have this very simple but brilliant technological advancement, with Silk Road combining Bitcoin and Tor and growing into a scalable anonymized community. The essence was more threatening to government than the drugs, like that community ease of use with Napster was more threatening to institutional power than just piracy per se. The second big similarity is in Silk Road you had a central server. Just like with Napster, that became a weakness because it's easier to shut down.</p>
<p>Like with Napster, copycats appeared, most of them terrible, but some are showing up that are very successfully moving toward a decentralized market, like with BitTorrent, and that will be extremely difficult to stop. Silk Road is the beginning of the era, not the end. And even with Ulbricht's story, revelations about [criminality on the part of] the federal agents [investigating him] show that what happened with Ross, other things might come out. The book might get slammed on him, but his family will work tirelessly appealing.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> You got interesting stuff from FBI agent Chris Tarbell, the guy who allegedly found the Silk Road server via a security error on the site. Was there anything tricky about getting the government's side?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> I was happy that I didn't get clichéd table-pounding demonizing of the Internet and privacy. I got a genuine examination of a conundrum. You can say you want to dismantle privacy and encryption and anonymity, but you are making yourself more vulnerable [as a society] if you do that. It's just a fact, [these technologies] require more legwork for law enforcement, in the same way it requires legwork if you go up to a house with a lock on the door. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be allowed to have locks.</p>
<p><strong>Q:</strong> Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the liberty Silk Road represented?</p>
<p><strong>A:</strong> Andy Greenberg [of <em>Wired</em>] said it well in the movie: It will be a continual game of cat and mouse, and in the end the mice will win, but the cats will be well-fed. Despite the continual fist-waving and invective [over everything] from Napster through the Arab Spring through WikiLeaks through Silk Road, we have been expanding freedom and using technology to create social change, inform and change politics, and connect people—whether in totalitarian regimes or in perceived free cultures like ours. While institutional pressure against those technologies and movements has been increasing, those movements and technologies have been expanding regardless.</p>
<p>Things like Silk Road that help erode the horrendous drug war will continue to change policy on a big level. I'm not all rosy or Pollyanna about the Net. It's not all great. Horrible things go on, but I am supportive of using technologies to democratize culture and change policies that need to be changed.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/pVhZCzYEOvE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/dive-into-the-deep-webQuotestag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489742015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00
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<p>"Let's give it up for the Secret Service. I don't want to be too hard on those guys. You know, because they're the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot."<br />
—Saturday Night Live cast member Cecily Strong, during her White House Correspondents' Dinner remarks, April 25</p>
<p>"I'm not an upstanding citizen. I'm the evil that goes bump in the night in this city. Whoever don't know my name, know my face. But goddamn, can we at least get due process? Send me to jail for life, if I'm a criminal. I don't want anyone to get hurt tonight."<br />
—Yusha Hasim Al-Fahd, a Baltimore gang member who helped form a barrier between protesters and police during the Freddie Gray riots, quoted in <em>Bloomberg Politics</em>, April 29</p>
<p>"Cyber is just pounding me from every direction."<br />
—Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee on Homeland Security appropriations, during a hearing on cybersecurity funding for the FBI, March 27</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/v8s_kI0Imrw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/quotesAlt Power From Art to Businesstag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489732015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Brian Dohertyhttp://reason.com/people/brian-doherty
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<p><img alt="" height="210" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/followup815.jpg?h=210&amp;w=320" title="|||" width="320" style="float: right;" />In 2008 <strong>reason</strong> reported on the troubles that the regulatory authorities of the city of Berkeley, California, brought to bear on a machine artist named Jim Mason and his crew at a build space called the Shipyard ("Power From the People," May 2008). Mason and his team thought they were conducting interesting artistic experiments with fire and destructive machinery and repurposing old shipping containers as live/work spaces. Berkeley officials didn't see it that way: They just saw shenanigans that might be dangerous and didn't fit their existing bureaucratic standards for entertainment, living, and building.</p>
<p>The feud eventually led the city to shut off Mason's electricity. To power themselves—and their Burning Man art projects—he and his crew experimented with "gasification." This process creates essentially carbon neutral energy via "burning" carbon-based refuse (like coffee grounds, corn husks, or nut shells) in a low oxygen environment to produce gases burnable in an engine.</p>
<p>As Mason's interest in gasification techniques grew, the art project morphed into a business called All Power Labs which is still running out of that same Berkeley property. It is now a 40-employee, patent-holding company pulling in about $5 million a year selling gasifier products such as "Power Pallets" and "Power Cubes" to anyone with access to burnable biomass waste, including in Liberia, Haiti, and the Philippines.</p>
<p>The company has been glowingly profiled in tech mags like <em>Fast Company</em> and <em>Gigaom</em>, and Berkeley has seemed to recognize the value All Power Labs brings to its vaunted "Green Corridor." The city apparently prefers working with an ecologically conscious power business to dealing with some arty weirdos.</p>
<p>Mason says his product is demanded not just by rural villages seeking to light their huts, but by industries in countries with unreliable power grids wanting a cheaper solution than diesel generators (or solar). "At that $1.50 per watt price point, a customer that buys a Power Pallet to replace a generator and diesel fuel can recover their costs in 15 months," <em>Gigaom</em> reported.</p>
<p>"Merely trying to manifest a simple DIY idea isn't enough," Mason has learned. "To be meaningful and engage the world, it has to be more than just 'let's make this, it kind of works, take it to Maker Faire, fun!' thing," he says. It's rather a "manufacturing process of incredibly disciplined management, sales, control, regularity, expressing," he jokes, "all the proper Republican values."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/8Zut_RFE2b8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/alt-power-from-art-to-business70 Years of Dubious Federal Food Rulestag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489722015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00
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<p>From a World War II–era food wheel in which butter is listed as one of the seven major food groups to today's much-maligned "MyPlate" serving chart, take a tour through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's sometimes hilarious attempts to guide Americans toward healthy eating.</p>
<p><img alt="" height="647" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/foodrules.jpg?h=647&amp;w=500" title="||| Jason Keisling" width="500" style="vertical-align: baseline;" /></p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/jKhA8oe7iDs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/70-years-of-dubious-federal-foBrickbatstag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489712015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Charles Oliverhttp://reason.com/people/charles-oliver
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<p><img alt="" height="252" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/bat4.jpg?h=252&amp;w=250" title="||| TerryColon.com" width="250" style="float: right;" />Code enforcement officers in Ogden, Utah, have ordered Jeremy Trentelman to take down the cardboard fort he built in his yard for his 3-year-old son. They say the fort violates city litter laws.</p>
<p>In 2008, Rene Lima-Marin walked out of a Colorado prison after serving 10 years of what he thought was a 16-year sentence for robbery. He then completed what he was told were his five years of probation. He got married, started a family, joined a church, got a steady job, and seemed to have turned his life around. Then, last year, he was informed that his release had been a big mistake. He still had 88 years left on his sentence. He's back in prison now and won't be eligible for parole until 2054.</p>
<p>Officials at Stevenson College in Santa Cruz apologized after Mexican food was served during a party with a science fiction theme. They received complaints that the menu linked Hispanic students with aliens.</p>
<p>Gregory Wallace and another man burst into the Kentucky home of Jordan and Tommy Gray and robbed them and their 3-year-old daughter at gunpoint. But at Wallace's sentencing hearing, Judge Olu Stevens took time to single out the Grays for criticism. The robbers are black, and the Grays had noted in an impact statement that their daughter has reacted in fear to black men since the incident. Stevens said those remarks offended him and accused the parents of fostering racist behavior.</p>
<p>The agency in charge of censoring Russia's Internet has reminded residents that it is illegal to post any celebrity meme that does not reflect that person's "personality."</p>
<p>Bishop Daryl Harris was stunned to learn the city of Detroit was suing his church for $170,000 in back electricity payments. For one thing, the church's landlord is responsible for paying the utility bills. For another, the provider is DTE Energy, not the city. The next day, the city cut off the water at Harris' home. It turns out it had made a mistake in both cases: The church it meant to sue was a different one with a similar name, and Harris was up to date on his water bill. But officials said he would still have to pay $30 to have his water turned back on.</p>
<p>Workers at Ohio's Youngstown State University removed posters promoting Straight Pride Week after the student government declared the message on the posters went beyond free speech. A statement said the posters "were not authorized, contained vulgar language, and, unfortunately, miss the point of minority activism."</p>
<p>Voters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, have banned helium balloons. Supporters say the ban will protect marine animals, which may mistake the balloons for food.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/Tbd1e_3GASg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/brickbats30 Years Agotag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489702015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00
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<p>"Cellular telephones could conceivably become one of the new law-enforcement tools of the '80s and beyond. This possibility raises disturbing questions about citizens' constitutional right to privacy and their ability to protect that right. Given the fast pace of technological change and the comparatively slow pace of legal change, technology promises to outstrip the law. How, then, can individual privacy survive the threat of growing government intrusion in the new communications age?"<br />
<strong>—Robert L. Corn, "Wireless Tapping"</strong></p>
<p>"Some people are starting to fight fire with fire—or, more literally, to fight over-65 lobbies like the powerful American Association of Retired Persons with a new baby-boom membership organization, Americans for Generational Equity (AGE). The group plans to develop positions and conduct original research on the budget deficit, entitlements for the elderly, and other issues where the interests of young people are often neglected unfairly."<br />
<strong>—"Doubts About Social Security Come of Age"</strong></p>
<p><em>—August 1985</em></p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/PcNDhpGhE-E" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/30-years-agoV.A. Swindletag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489692015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00J.D. Tuccillehttp://reason.com/people/jd-tuccille

Data breached

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<p>For more evidence of the dangers of letting government officials demand sensitive information from citizens, look no further than the ongoing scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.). Once focused on the apparently lethal mistreatment of military veterans by a system created to provide them with medical care, the story now also encompasses retaliation by officials against V.A. employees who raised concerns about such mistreatment.</p>
<p>"In several cases, the medical records of whistleblowers have been accessed and information in those records has apparently been used to attempt to discredit the whistleblowers," Carolyn Lerner from the Office of Special Counsel said during a congressional hearing in April. Lerner's office is tasked with shielding government whistleblowers from retaliation; she also told lawmakers that V.A. staffers now make up 40 percent of her office's caseload.</p>
<p>Among the whistleblowers whose medical records may have been inappropriately browsed by government officials is Brandon Coleman, who was placed on administrative leave after complaining that suicidal veterans were receiving dangerously poor treatment. Coleman showed <strong>reason</strong> evidence that, even after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took up his case and V.A. Secretary Robert McDonald personally met with him, his private medical records were illegally accessed.</p>
<p>Many government agencies possess similarly sensitive information about Americans. The Internal Revenue Service and Census Bureau compel disclosure of personal data, law enforcement agencies gather it through legal filings and court records, and intelligence operations collect it in ways that are at times questionably legal. Much of this information gets stored away indefinitely, and as the ongoing V.A. saga demonstrates, the resulting databases can be mined for information to be used against dissident employees—or anybody else.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/4v_BUawk4q8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/va-swindleForfeiture Reformtag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489682015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Scott Shackfordhttp://reason.com/people/scott-shackford

New rules for New Mexico

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<p>In March, the New Mexico legislature voted for major reforms of its asset forfeiture laws. The state had come under fire for abuse of the program, including a 2010 case in which cops pulled a couple of travelers over for a minor traffic violation and seized $17,000 in cash they were intending to use for a trip and home renovations.</p>
<p>The legislation, House Bill 560, ended any possible "civil" component of asset forfeiture. Police in New Mexico would still be able to seize property, but they would have to prove a crime actually happened in order to justify the taking. Furthermore, law enforcement agencies in the state would no longer be able to keep the proceeds for themselves. Any property seized would be auctioned off and all returns would go to the state's general fund.</p>
<p>This shift has two important consequences. First, it reduces the incentives for law enforcement agencies to look for reasons to seize property. Second, it ends the state's participation in the Department of Justice's Equitable Sharing Program. Law enforcement agencies have been bypassing state restrictions on asset forfeiture by partnering with the feds on busts and then keeping a good chunk of the seized assets for themselves. The new rules would effectively prohibit that practice.</p>
<p>The legislation passed with absolutely no opposition in either house of the New Mexico legislature. Since Republicans run the state's House of Representatives and Democrats dominate the state's Senate, that makes it a bipartisan accomplishment. Waiting until the last possible day before a pocket veto would have gone into effect, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez signed the legislation into law, agreeing it would "provide further protections to innocent property owners."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/_Dp30Dq48RM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/forfeiture-reformDoc Fix Dealtag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489672015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Peter Sudermanhttp://reason.com/people/peter-suderman

Bipartisan budget buster

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<p>In April, President Barack Obama signed a repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), the payment formula that for more than a decade had called for large reductions in Medicare's physician reimbursements. Those reductions had always been overridden in a recurring congressional ritual that came to be known as the "doc fix."</p>
<p>Members of both parties had long sought a permanent doc fix, and over the last two years had even agreed on the outlines of a replacement. But negotiations had always broken down when the two sides failed to settle on a way to offset the budgetary impact of permanently ending the large Medicare payment cuts that the existing SGR formula called for.</p>
<p>There turned out to be a simple bipartisan solution: Don't figure out how to pay for it at all. The repeal, passed with large majorities from both parties in both the House and the Senate, offset a little less than a third of its estimated $200 billion price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that it would add $141 billion to the deficit over 10 years.</p>
<p>The deal's conservative defenders argue that in the long run, it will curtail entitlement costs by imposing additional means-testing on some parts of Medicare. But at best, those savings will only pay off over decades. And one estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan organization focused on deficit reduction, found that, because the new law puts physicians on track to receive regular raises in Medicare payments, ending the doc fix will actually add some $500 billion to the deficit over the long term.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/e3jXnzyK4Uc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/doc-fix-dealSay My Nametag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489662015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Scott Shackfordhttp://reason.com/people/scott-shackford

No-fly list opened up

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<p>The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has come under fire for the extremely opaque handling of its "no-fly list." Historically, DHS has refused to confirm whether a given person was even on the list. The agency has also declined to offer a clear set of rules for appealing one's status. People who are booted off planes simply submit information about themselves to the federal government in the hopes of being delisted.</p>
<p>Now, having lost a series of court challenges over how the list is managed, Homeland Security is finally being ordered to institute some actual due process and transparency for people fighting their inclusion. In April, the Department of Justice announced an early first step: The DHS will be required to confirm to people denied entry onto a plane that they are on the list.</p>
<p>The new policy was announced in a court filing explaining how the federal government plans to address the failures that led to these lawsuits. In addition to confirming whether an individual is on the no-fly list, the DHS will, if asked, provide a "more detailed response" identifying the criteria used to place the individual on the list—though some information "may not be provided when the national security and law enforcement interests are at stake."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/BsPrIl0u0Y4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/say-my-nameStage Wagestag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489652015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Elizabeth Nolan Brownhttp://reason.com/people/elizabeth-nolan-brown

Actors against regulation

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<p>Los Angeles stage actors are fighting a minimum wage battle. But these thespians are opposing the $9 hourly minimum instituted in April by the Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the national stage actors' labor union.</p>
<p>Under old rules, only theaters with 100 or more seats had to pay equity actors a minimum wage, while smaller venues could get away with a token stipend per performance. Under the new rules, however, small Los Angeles County theaters must pay actors $9 per hour for all performances and rehearsal time. Shows with fewer than 50 seats may be exempted from the wage requirement, but they're then limited to a 16-performance run and three shows per season.</p>
<p>In explaining the union's move, Mary McColl, executive director of the AEA, told American Theatre: "Minimum wage is kind of the floor for everybody across the country. We are a labor union, and we want our members to have fair working conditions on contract work."</p>
<p>Many L.A.-area AEA members—for whom theater is both a passion and a profession—say the changes will bar them from volunteering time with small, independent, and experimental theaters. The required payment per actor per show for a lot of such theaters will jump from as little as $110 for a typical run to more than $1,000. The L.A. Drama Critics Circle predicted "a drastic reduction in the amount and quality of local theater."&#160;</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/7YX5BZ9BD_Q" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/stage-wagesPro-Life Losstag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489642015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Stephanie Sladehttp://reason.com/people/stephanie-slade

D.C. discrimination law

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<p>Late on April 30, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block the implementation of a Washington, D.C., law called the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act (RHNDA). To actually nullify it, the Senate would have had to take the same step and the president would have needed to sign the resolution by May 2.</p>
<p>That didn't happen, so RHNDA is now in effect. The law prohibits discrimination by employers "on the basis of the individual's or a dependent's reproductive health decision making" or "on the basis of an employer's personal beliefs about such services." Proponents say the measure is necessary to protect women from, for example, being fired for using birth control or in vitro fertilization.</p>
<p>Religious organizations counter that RHNDA could be used to force religious small-business owners or even pro-life activist groups to hire outspoken abortion supporters. "It would be intolerable for an advocacy organization such as ours," wrote the National Right to Life Committee in an open letter to members of Congress, "to be required to hire, or prohibited from firing, a person who makes a 'decision' to engage in advocacy or any other activity that is directly antithetical to our core mission to lawfully advocate for the civil rights of the unborn."</p>
<p>It's now for the courts to decide whether RHNDA is valid. At least one organization—Catholic University, located in Northeast D.C.—has said it believes it can win a legal battle to overturn the law.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/ToyPSBAlBrE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/pro-life-lossMilitary Surplustag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489632015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Brian Dohertyhttp://reason.com/people/brian-doherty

DOD inventory, overstocked

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<p>The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recognized since 1990 that the Defense Department suffers from "ineffective and inefficient inventory management practices and procedures [and] weaknesses in accurately forecasting the demand for spare parts." Such issues have "contributed to the accumulation of billions of dollars in spare parts that are excess to current needs."</p>
<p>An April 2015 follow-up GAO study on military inventory practices found that the Army, Air Force, and Navy still had expensive inventory management issues. It found, for example, that the Army violated its own guidance and consequently underreported its "on-hand excess inventory." Similarly, the Navy's and Air Force's inventory reports included "contractor-managed inventory," making it seem like the services "had made greater progress in reducing their on-hand excess inventory than they actually had."</p>
<p>The Air Force alone "identified about $2.6 billion in inventory that was retained without proper economic justification and plans to continue to retain it until late 2016." The Defense Department is trying to reduce already-purchased inventory that may now be unnecessary to 6 percent of total inventory value. Neither the Army nor the Navy has met that goal.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/LPzTTeW9cFk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/military-surplusCampus Sex Fighttag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489622015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Robby Soavehttp://reason.com/people/robby-soave

Columbia sued

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<p>A male student is suing Columbia University for failing to protect him from sexual harassment. But the full story is complicated, since the alleged harassment was perpetrated by a female student who first accused <em>him</em> of sexually assaulting <em>her</em>.</p>
<p>The lawsuit is the latest front in a war of accusations between Paul Nungesser and Emma Sulkowicz, a pair of friends-turned-lovers-turned-enemies. Both sides agree they met on campus as freshmen in 2011; by the end of the school year, they had become close confidants and infrequent sexual partners. At the start of their sophomore year, they had sex for a third time. Seven months later, after drifting apart, Sulkowicz claimed that Nungesser had choked, assaulted, and raped her during this final encounter. She filed a complaint with the university, but Columbia found Nungesser not responsible and the police declined to press charges, saying there was a lack of probable suspicion.</p>
<p>Undeterred, Sulkowicz went public with her allegations and began carrying her mattress to class in protest of Nungesser's continued presence on campus. A faculty advisor endorsed this effort as a visual arts project for which Sulkowicz received course credit. Nungesser's lawsuit, filed on April 23, 2015, claims that Columbia "effectively destroyed" his college experience, reputation, and career prospects by allowing Sulkowicz to conduct a smear campaign against him.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/DK9OCBuWnQE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/campus-sex-fightRiots in Baltimoretag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489612015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Ed Krayewskihttp://reason.com/people/ed-krayewski

Death by police

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<p>On May 1, following the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged six police officers with a series of crimes ranging from official misconduct to murder. Gray reportedly ran when officers made eye contact with him on April 12, and cops pursued him. He was then arrested for allegedly carrying an illegal knife and placed in a police van, where he suffered a spinal injury and went into a coma, dying one week later.</p>
<p>In her indictment, Mosby said the knife was legal to possess, but at least one officer's attorney insists that it wasn't. The indictments the grand jury returned don't include false imprisonment charges, reflecting uncertainty over the knife.</p>
<p>Demonstrations for Freddie Gray started a few days after his death. Things turned violent on April 25 and April 27, as riots broke out in different parts of the city. Citing safety concerns, officials closed a Baltimore Orioles day game against the Chicago White Sox to the public, leading to an eerie visual of two professional baseball teams playing to a completely empty stadium.</p>
<p>The police union, which had called demonstrators a "lynch mob" when protests were still peaceful, maintains that the officers, who under the Maryland Law Enforcement Officers' Bill of Rights can't be fired unless they are found guilty, are not responsible for Gray's death.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/0MvMCrti3mU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/riots-in-baltimoreRulebreaking Made Silicon Valleytag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489592015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Robby Soavehttp://reason.com/people/robby-soave
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<p><img alt="" height="154" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/silvalley.jpg?h=154&amp;w=200" title="||| Frank Masi / HBO" width="200" style="float: right;" />Halfway through the second season of HBO's <em>Silicon Valley</em>, wannabe tech entrepreneur Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) dresses down a nosy neighbor intent on alerting the cops to Bachman's unlicensed commercial activities. "Do you know why your shitty house is worth 20 times what you paid for it in the 1970s?" Bachman rants. "Because of people like us moving in and starting illegal businesses in our garages. [That's] why Silicon Valley is one of the hottest neighborhoods in the world."</p>
<p>It's a fitting statement of purpose for this show, which celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of friends trying to launch a revolutionary tech company called Pied Piper. They court investors, haggle with employees, and wage unfriendly competition with corporate giant Hooli, a fictitious Apple or Google clone that fights dirty.</p>
<p>The Pied Piper crew members are cynical about their chances, but the opportunity to build something that could one day be worth millions keeps them motivated—zoning restrictions be damned.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/BEzd6iSk1OY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/rulebreaking-made-silicon-vallSelma and Baltimoretag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489582015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Stephanie Sladehttp://reason.com/people/stephanie-slade
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<p><img alt="" height="174" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/selma.jpg?h=174&amp;w=200" title="||| Selma" width="200" style="float: right;" />"We're not asking, we're demanding: Give us the vote!" says David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oscar-nominated <em>Selma</em>. The film celebrates King above all for his commitment to the practice of non-violent protest. He is repeatedly shown imploring his followers to "disturb the peace" but rejects the more radical tactics of people like Malcolm X.</p>
<p><em>Selma</em> appeared on Amazon's instant streaming service in late April—just as chaos was unfolding in Baltimore. When Freddie Gray, a black 25-year-old, died of a spinal injury a week after being taken into police custody there, protesters flooded the streets, eventually becoming violent.</p>
<p>Throughout the protests-turned-riots, Gray's stepfather, Richard Shipley, like King before him, called for composure. "I was so hurt and ashamed that they were apparently attempting to use [violence] in the name of Freddie," he said. "Even though it was a tragic situation, we must protest and raise our voices in a peaceful manner."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/k8lAKCR6cWs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/selma-and-baltimoreGreen Fairy in the Big Easytag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489572015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Katherine Mangu-Wardhttp://reason.com/people/katherine-mangu-ward
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<p>The Southern Food and Beverage Museum's <em><img alt="La Galerie d'Absinthe" height="174" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/absinth.jpg?h=174&amp;w=200" title="||| Courtesy of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum" width="200" style="float: right;" /></em> serves up a profusion of artifacts associated with the herbal liqueur favored by debauched artists and denizens of the night. A mismatched assortment of glass cases overflows with the silvered paraphernalia the drink's classic presentation requires, as well as hundreds of dusty bottles, newspaper clippings, labels, and even elaborate fountains designed to dispense the high-proof beverage.</p>
<p>The exhibit celebrates New Orleans' proud history of scoffing at vice scolds, including a decidedly damp Prohibition period and an uninterrupted tradition of absinthe consumption—even during the decades "the green fairy" was banned in the United States.</p>
<p>The bright, informal museum (which shares space with the Museum of the American Cocktail) is located in a pleasant airy loft. But Bourbon Street tourists take note: You will have to leave the city's familiar bacchanalia and walk under a seedy overpass to get there.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/4Lj7S1DrFjo" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/green-fairy-in-the-big-easyMaking Money from Musictag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489562015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Brian Dohertyhttp://reason.com/people/brian-doherty
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<p><img alt="" height="182" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/bside.jpg?h=182&amp;w=200" title="||| The B-Side" width="200" style="float: right;" />Ben Yagoda's perceptive book <em>The B-Side</em> (Riverhead) laments the passing of the era of the "Great American Songbook," a period that lasted from 1925 to 1950. While his bemoaning of the end of the "standards" period is insightful—rock 'n' roll was not to blame, he argues convincingly—he also delivers sideways insight into the constant evolution of pop economics as well as pop aesthetics.</p>
<p>In 2013, 1.26 billion digital music tracks were sold. In 1917, over 2 billion songs' worth of sheet music were sold. Foreshadowing the arguments over music pirating in the 1990s, unauthorized performers of popular songs in the early 20th century argued that they were doing the copyright holders a favor: Their public performances helped to boost sheet music sales.</p>
<p>A giant industry built on selling recorded sound may prove to be a historical blip, but new ways to get people to pay arise unexpectedly and it's a good bet that people will continue making and loving music.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/PZ-zvdDDiA0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/making-money-from-musicPosthuman Page-Turnertag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489552015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Ronald Baileyhttp://reason.com/people/ronald-bailey
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<p><em><img alt="" height="139" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/brain.jpg?h=139&amp;w=200" title="||| Apex" width="200" style="float: right;" />Apex</em> (Angry Robot) caps Ramez Naam's rumbustious, idea-packed transhumanist trilogy. The first novel, <em>Nexus</em>, was the 2014 co-winner of the Prometheus Award for libertarian-themed science fiction. The trilogy features a merry band of young technologists led by Kaden Lane who create an ingestible nano-drug called Nexus in 2040. Worried that Nexus, which links minds telepathically, could be abused by governments, Lane and his friends want to make it available to everyone.</p>
<p>As the trilogy develops, all hell breaks loose with agents of the U.S. government's Emerging Risks Directorate seeking to eradicate Nexus and hunting its creators across the globe. <em>Apex</em> opens as a posthuman artificial intelligence driven insane by Chinese government torture is on the verge of provoking a nuclear war between the U.S. and China. One of the book's lessons: Treat posthumans as you would like to be treated. Or else.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/5wfQb-dWrQw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/posthuman-page-turnerHighlights from the 2016 Campaign Literaturetag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489532015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Glenn Garvinhttp://reason.com/people/glenn-garvin
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<p><strong>The Claude Rains Award for total transparency:</strong> Mike Huckabee, for his forthright declaration that "I didn't kidnap the Lindbergh baby, I didn't sink the Titanic, and I wasn't standing on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963." He also denies ever having tasted Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.</p>
<p><strong>The MKULTRA Award for a veiled bid to run the CIA:</strong> Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon: "I could take an 85-year-old man and place depth electrodes into a certain part of his brain followed by an appropriate electrical stimulation and he would be able to recite verbatim a book he read 60 years ago."</p>
<p><strong>The Don-Draper-on-Acid Award for political advertising:</strong> In the 2010 U.S. Senate primary in California, Carly Fiorina portrayed her opponent as a sheep with hellfire-red eyes wearing a Jason-style hockey mask. The "demon sheep" ad, as it became known, was "unconventional," she recounts with considerable understatement. More accurately, the online outlet <em>SFist</em> proclaimed: "Fans of batshit insane campaign commercials rejoice!"</p>
<p><strong>The greatest circumlocution since "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is":</strong> Hillary Clinton, describing an argument over whether the raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout could be scheduled during the White House Correspondents' Dinner, at which Barack Obama was scheduled to speak: "While I don't remember exactly what I said, some in the media have quoted me using a four-letter word to dismiss the correspondents' dinner. I have not sought a correction."</p>
<p><strong>The most ringing endorsement of technology:</strong> "I don't buy into the dystopian scenario of self-aware robots enslaving mankind," declares a defiant Marco Rubio.</p>
<p><strong>The John Galt Award for the most concise description of a libertarian society ever:</strong> Rick Santorum, the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania: "It has become popular, particularly among libertarians, to think of freedom as being allowed to do as we please....Smoking marijuana, hiring prostitutes, aborting your child, ignoring the poor and doing whatever else gives you momentary pleasure, as long as no one else gets hurt."</p>
<p><strong>The most useful guy to have around in a post-apocalyptic landscape:</strong> Huckabee, who pugnaciously notes that his family was so poor when he was growing up that he had to learn to stab frogs with regular garden tools instead of fancy store-bought frog-stabbers.</p>
<p><strong>The best Hallmark moment:</strong> The first nine months of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's first term were mostly spent battling public sector unions who took over the Capitol building, picketed his home, and vandalized the Capitol grounds. When it all ended, Walker's staff presented him with a scrapbook of clippings and photos, including some of demonstrators with signs comparing him to Hitler. "Now when we're old and sitting in our rockers," murmured his wife Tonette, "we can look back and remember how 100,000 people hated you."</p>
<p><strong>The With-Charity-Toward-All-and-Malice-Toward-None Award:</strong> Carson writes that Adolf Hitler's regime "may have started out innocently enough, but..."</p>
<p><strong>Most likely to stand up to Big Vegan:</strong> Huckabee, the unapologetic animal lover: "I loved them baked, fried, roasted, grilled, sautéed, steamed, smoked and poached." On the other hand, there goes the barbecue vote.</p>
<p><strong>Have I mentioned how hard-working and experienced I am?</strong> Did you know Clinton visited 112 countries as secretary of state? She mentions it three times in the first four pages.</p>
<p><strong>Ruthless ambition? Who, me?</strong> Clinton's book also mentions "public service" four times in the first three pages.</p>
<p><strong>The Henry F. Potter Humanitarian Award:</strong> To Rubio, for explaining that we need to offer parents generous tax credits for having kids, because they're raising "the children who will be the taxpayers of tomorrow and who will support the generational entitlements like Social Security and Medicare that we all benefit from." And if they get mouthy about it, we can turn them into Soylent Green.</p>
<p><strong>The most gratuitous smear of Arachnid Americans:</strong> Carson: "I have never been a fan of big hairy wolf spiders."</p>
<p><strong>Best vocational tip:</strong> Thanks to guaranteed overtime stipulated by their union-negotiated contract, seven bus drivers in Madison, Wisconsin, made more than $100,000 in 2009, writes Walker.</p>
<p><strong>Best tip for patronage seekers in a Hillary Clinton White House:</strong> His intelligence services warned Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov that when Clinton's hair was pulled back, she was in a bad mood.</p>
<p><strong>Let them eat fried green tomatoes—or else:</strong> None of that "I'll be president of all Americans" stuff for Huckabee. "If people don't put pepper sauce on their black-eyed peas or order fried green tomatoes for an appetizer, I probably won't relate to them without some effort," he warns. "I'm a catfish and cornbread kind of guy, not a caviar and crab salad connoisseur." He does not preview what might happen the first time President Huckabee is sitting at an arms-control summit table with Kim Jong Un and the kimchi comes out.</p>
<p><strong>Most horrifying personal revelation if you're Harry Reid:</strong> Carson confesses that, during an argument, he once stabbed a high school classmate in the stomach.</p>
<p><strong>Most horrifying personal revelation if you're everyone else:</strong> Carson confesses that in high school, he carried a slide rule in a holster.</p>
<p><strong>Worst researchers:</strong> Those on Team Hillary (she employed at least four, according to the acknowledgments), who found such brain-deadening quotes as this one from a 2009 economic conference with China: "We need to build a resilient relationship that allows both of us to thrive and meet our global responsibilities without unhealthy competition, rivalry or conflict." I'm sure on the audiobook version you can actually hear reporters shrieking as they jab chopsticks into their ears.</p>
<p><strong>Best researchers:</strong> A tie among all the Republicans, whose talent for oppo research consistently produces priceless stuff like Huckabee's description of environmental dilettante John Travolta explaining to reporters that flying his jet to London for a movie premiere shouldn't count against his carbon footprint because "otherwise I couldn't be here doing this."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/w6QUoTKeqEo" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/highlights-from-the-2016-campaIllegal Underwater Winetag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489492015-08-01T12:00:00-04:002015-08-01T12:00:00-04:00Katherine Mangu-Wardhttp://reason.com/people/katherine-mangu-ward
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<p><img alt="Aquaoire" height="347" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/artifactwine.jpg?h=347&amp;w=500" title="Aquaoire ||| Courtesy of Mira Winery" width="500" style="vertical-align: baseline;" /></p>
<p>In metal cages at the bottom of Charleston Harbor sit six cases of cabernet and two of chardonnay from Napa Valley's Mira winery. They're part of a tiny ongoing experiment to study the effects of underwater pressure, temperature, and agitation on the aging process, inspired in part by some surprisingly good bottles salvaged from shipwrecks.</p>
<p>In March, however, federal regulators decided the wine (dubbed "Aquaoir") might be contaminated with "filth," "effluents," and "bilge waters," even though the corks were sealed with wax and even though a previous batch showed clean test results.</p>
<p>The Treasury Department's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau—charged with overseeing wine labeling—announced that it would punt any requests from vintners to the Food and Drug Administration, essentially putting a halt to all sales and even tasting of the wine.</p>
<p>Jim Dyke, the president of Mira, would like to continue the experiment, but he's unsure whether he can. "Anytime when there's heavy-handedness by the government, that creates uncertainty," he says. For now, Mira will pull up the remaining wine this summer and analyze it in a lab, since that's "the one thing they don't forbid us from doing."</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/SJxajIYJp3k" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/illegal-underwater-wineSpies, Lies, and the Undergroundtag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2489602015-08-01T10:30:00-04:002015-08-01T10:30:00-04:00Athan Theoharishttp://reason.com/people/athan-theoharis

A new book shines some light on the violent radicals of the 1970s but misses their biggest impact on American politics.

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<p><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594204292/reasonmagazineA/">Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence</a>, by Bryan Burrough, Penguin Press, 608 pages, $29.95</em></p>
<p>Beginning in 1969, a small but noisy segment of the radical left turned to bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings, jailbreaks, targeted assassinations of police officers, and other acts of violence. At the outset of <em>Days of Rage</em>, Bryan Burrough claims that the "most startling thing about the 1970s-era underground is how thoroughly it has been forgotten." His reconstruction of that period's activities profits from the journalist's extensive and revealing interviews with activists, their attorneys, and former FBI agents. The result is a comprehensive account of the lifestyles, motivations, and actions of the militants who went underground during the 1970s and '80s: the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional, the United Freedom Front, the Mutulu Shakur Group.</p>
<p>Burrough characterizes these groups' headline-making behavior as "revolutionary violence," but they bore more real-world resemblance to crude terrorists and petty criminals. Their operations were uncoordinated, they lacked (and did not seek) broad support even within the radical political community, and, accordingly, they failed to seriously challenge established political and economic institutions. Yet despite their illegal actions, these activists for the most part escaped apprehension, whether by local police or the FBI. This is a striking failure, given the costs of their misdeeds: 23 people killed, 169 people wounded, more than a million dollars in property damage, more than a million dollars stolen.</p>
<p>Burrough's book is a riveting read, recapturing the senseless violence and perversity of the era. But it is of limited value to an understanding of the politics of the 1970s. <em>Days of Rage</em> has plenty of details about the activists' drug use, their sexual promiscuity, their extensive use of bombings (1,900 in 1972 alone), and their indifference to the consequences of violence for the broader radical movement. But the author is not well-informed on FBI operations, and his account says nothing about the paradoxical impact these radical activists had on the nation's political institutions.</p>
<p><img alt="Days of Rage " height="304" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2013_07/DaysofRage.jpg?h=304&amp;w=200" title="||| Days of Rage" width="200" style="float: right;" /></p>
<p>So let's put this story in a broader context. In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, the Cold War produced a militantly anti-Communist politics that equated dissent with disloyalty. That in turn led to an expansion of presidential power and the FBI's surveillance authority. By contrast, the terrorism of the '70s did not give rise to a more repressive politics, to the expansion of the FBI's surveillance powers, or to an increase in presidential power, despite the bureau's failure to apprehend the people responsible for the violence. To the contrary, the 1970s witnessed an unprecedented reassessment of the role and authority of both the presidency and the FBI. One catalyst to these developments was the Nixon administration's reaction to the radicals' activities.</p>
<p>A review of FBI wiretapping authority highlights this reassessment. When Congress enacted legislation in 1934 regulating the communications industry, it adopted a section banning wiretapping. In rulings released in 1937 and 1939, the Supreme Court held first that this ban applied to federal agents and then that any indictment based on information derived from wiretaps would have to be dismissed.</p>
<p>Despite that ban and those rulings, President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 secretly authorized FBI wiretaps during "national defense" investigations. (This was ostensibly intended to enable the FBI to anticipate and thus avert planned espionage or sabotage operations, but not to assist in the prosecution of spies and saboteurs.) Influenced by the security concerns of the Cold War era, Congress rescinded its ban in 1968. The new law required any proposed wiretap to be approved by a court in advance, but it also undercut the court's oversight role by stipulating that the warrant requirement shall not "limit the constitutional powers of the President to take such measures as he deems necessary to protect the Nation against actual or potential attacks or other violent acts of a foreign power, to obtain foreign intelligence deemed essential to the security of the United States, or to protect the United States against the overthrow of the Government by force or other unlawful measures, or against any other clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government."</p>
<p>When Richard Nixon became president in 1969, he interpreted that broad language as affirming his absolute power to authorize FBI wiretapping during an investigation of radical activists. The Supreme Court would reject this claim in 1972, at least as far as "domestic security" investigations were concerned. And in 1978, Congress would pass a law requiring officials to file affidavits with a special court affirming that a proposed surveillance subject was either in contact with a "foreign power," an "agent of a foreign power," or "an entity directed and controlled by a foreign government." But for now all that lay in the future.</p>
<p>Nixon's willingness to employ illegal investigative techniques was not confined to wiretapping. In 1970, frustrated by the FBI's inability to apprehend the underground activists and to document their suspected links with foreign Communist officials, the president appointed a special task force composed of the heads of four U.S. intelligence agencies—the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. This group in turn recommended that the president authorize a series of techniques it acknowledged were illegal: break-ins, mail openings, interception of international communications, and the expanded use of wiretaps and bugs.</p>
<p>Recognizing the legal problems with the proposals and interested in ensuring deniability, Nixon rejected the task force's recommendation that he issue an executive order explicitly authorizing such uses. Instead, an authorization memorandum was issued under the name of Tom Charles Huston, the aide who had served as the White House's liaison to the task force. The memo thus became known as the Huston Plan.</p>
<p>A principal purpose underpinning the task force's recommendations had been to rescind orders that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had imposed in the mid-1960s. Hoover's orders banned practices that the FBI had employed since the 1940s (break-ins, mail opening) and limited the use of wiretaps and bugs. Hoover believed such techniques were now too risky politically, given the possibility of exposure and the more skeptical political climate of the 1960s. The director had pointedly objected to the task force's recommendations prior to their formal submission for Nixon's consideration.</p>
<p>For Hoover, Huston's signature constituted insufficient authority; if the FBI's employment of any of these techniques were discovered, he worried it could have adverse consequences for the bureau's reputation and his continued tenure as director. Accordingly, he advised Attorney General John Mitchell that he would submit a written memorandum whenever the FBI employed any of the recommended techniques, stipulating that this had been done pursuant to the president's plan. Mitchell immediately briefed Nixon of Hoover's intention, and the Huston Plan was hastily recalled.</p>
<p>The Huston Plan's highly secret records were soon publicly compromised. First, in 1973, White House aide John Dean turned a copy of the plan over to the Senate Watergate Committee. Then, in 1975, a committee headed by Sen. Frank Church that was investigating abuses in the intelligence community held public hearings on the program. Finally, in 1976, the Church Committee published the plan's text and the record of the task force's deliberations.</p>
<p>And that leads us back to the radical underground of the '70s. Although the Huston Plan was dead, the White House continued to pressure the FBI to use "all means necessary" to apprehend radical activists. In response, senior FBI officials authorized the New York field office to employ break-ins during an investigation of individuals suspected of association with the Weather Underground, an investigation that began in 1970 and continued through 1973. On its face, the order seemingly violated Hoover's ban on break-ins.</p>
<p>During the course of its investigations, the Church Committee obtained two secret memoranda of 1966 and 1967 that recorded Hoover's order banning future break-ins—in the FBI's parlance, "black bag jobs." The July 1966 memo described in detail the special records procedure, Do Not File, that Hoover had instituted in 1942 to preclude discovery of this bureau practice. Moreover, it conceded that because break-ins were "clearly illegal," FBI officials could not solicit the approval of the attorney general. To ensure that his unilateral approval could not be discovered (whether in response to a congressional subpoena or a court-ordered discovery motion), the director required that all requests from the heads of the 56 FBI field offices seeking his authorization of this practice and of the records of such operations were to be regularly destroyed.</p>
<p>The Church Committee's staff, after reviewing that memorandum, asked FBI officials to identify the "specific targets" of black-bag jobs and the number of "domestic security" break-ins conducted by the bureau from 1942 to 1966. FBI officials responded that due to the Do Not File procedure, "there is no central index, file, or document…no [extant] precise record of [such] entries." Instead, basing their response on a general review of FBI files and the recollections of agents at FBI headquarters, they estimated that during the 1942–1966 period the FBI had conducted "at least 239" break-ins "against at least fifteen domestic security targets." The FBI's proffered estimates suggested that break-ins had been employed sparingly and that only figures seen as legitimate security threats (i.e., American Communist Party officials and suspected Soviet agents) had been targeted.</p>
<p>This response was contradicted with the discovery in March 1976 that the head of the New York field office, John Malone, had maintained in his office safe a massive file recording the break-ins conducted by his team from 1954 to 1973. The Malone records, when reviewed, confirmed that the New York office alone (and just since 1954, not 1942) had conducted 433 break-ins targeting 250 to 300 different individuals and organizations. The Malone File (now incorporated in the FBI's central records system as the Surreptitious Entries File) further confirmed that FBI agents continued to conduct break-ins after 1966, using them against such targets as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the Weather Underground.</p>
<p>The Malone File confirmed that the FBI had conducted break-ins extensively, that it had principally targeted political activists, and that in the process senior FBI officials had created a culture of lawlessness within the ranks of the agency. One memorandum in the Malone File captures the mind-set that governed the bureau's operations. Senior FBI officials, learning that a New York agent attending a training session had remarked that he considered break-ins to be unconstitutional, immediately suspended the New York field office's break-in operations. When advised that no member of the New York office's break-in squad shared this heretical belief, they lifted the suspension.</p>
<p>The Malone File had further rami­fications. Its unexpected discovery precipitated questions about the FBI's relationship with the Justice Department and its compliance with court-ordered discovery motions and congressional record requests. This is illustrated by bureau officials' response to a 1973 suit brought by the Socialist Workers Party and the unique circumstances that led to the indictment of two senior FBI officials in 1978.</p>
<p>The suit had been triggered by the public release that year first of the FBI's COINTELPRO files, which documented that the party had been one of that abusive program's targets, and then of the Huston Plan's proposed authorization of wiretaps and break-ins. Accordingly, the Socialist Workers Party's attorneys, during the trial's discovery phase, demanded all records of FBI wiretapping and break-ins involving their client. Based on FBI assurances, Justice Department attorneys conceded that the FBI had wiretapped the party but denied that there were any records of FBI break-ins.</p>
<p>With the discovery of the Malone File, U.S. attorneys moved quickly to advise the court that in fact the FBI had broken into the party's offices 94 times from 1960 to 1966. (The total turned out to be still higher. A further review of extant FBI records confirmed that agents had broken into Socialist Workers Party offices or party members' residences 208 times.) This admission proved to be an important factor in helping the socialists achieve a settlement award of $264,000 for the government's violation of their privacy rights.</p>
<p>By confirming that the FBI had continued to conduct break-ins targeting members of the Weather Underground after 1972, the Malone File meant that those involved could be prosecuted, their actions having fallen within the five-year statute of limitations. Justice Department attorneys, relying on the relevant extant records, thereupon launched an investigation that led to the indictment and conviction of senior FBI officials W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller for authorizing these break-ins.</p>
<p>Thus, the Nixon administration's pressure on the FBI led not to the apprehension and conviction of radical activists but to the unprecedented conviction of senior FBI officials for a practice their predecessors had safely conducted for three decades. (When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, he promptly pardoned both agents.)</p>
<p>Burrough's book barely touches on these surveillance operations, and at times it distorts their political and policy impact-misrepresenting, for example, the Supreme Court's 1972 wiretapping decision, the political impact of the Huston Plan, and the factors leading to the indictment and conviction of Felt and Miller. His account may be engaging to read, but it leaves the reader uninformed about the shifts in both the public's and Congress' ideas about executive secrecy and presidential claims to expansive "national security" powers.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/ergzIqr9Sgo" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/spies-lies-and-the-undergroundPRIME Act Would Steer Meat Processing in the Right Directiontag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2501482015-08-01T08:00:00-04:002015-08-01T08:00:00-04:00Baylen Linnekinhttp://reason.com/people/baylen-linnekin

A great new bi-partisan House bill would wrest control over intrastate meat slaughter from the USDA.

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<p><img alt="" height="170" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/_external/2015_07/-30.jpg?h=170&amp;w=250" title="|||" width="250" style="float: right;" />Late last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would dramatically re-shape the way many animals are slaughtered for food in this country. The <a href="http://massie.house.gov/press-release/press-release-us-representatives-massie-and-pingree-introduce-bill-revive-local-meat">PRIME Act</a>, which has several co-sponsors, including Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), and Jared Polis (D-Colo.), would give states the option of setting their own rules for processing meat that’s sold inside state borders. That’s a power Congress <a href="http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/fsis-content/fsis-questionable-content/celebrating-100-years-of-fmia/overview/ct_index">took</a> from the states and handed to the USDA in 1967.</p>
<p>This is an issue that interests—and concerns—me greatly. I moderated a <a href="http://today.law.harvard.edu/meat-eat-hls-hosts-forum-industrial-animal-farming-video/">panel</a> on reducing legal barriers to entry for livestock farmers and ranchers at Harvard Law School last year. As I also wrote <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/08/breaking-the-usdas-slaughterhouse-strang/singlepage">here</a> last year, in the wake of a food-safety scandal that forced the USDA to (rightly) close a California slaughterhouse, local slaughter options are few and far between for many farmers around the country.</p>
<p>The lack of USDA-approved processing plants forces farmers and ranchers of all sizes and types to funnel their cattle to one of a limited number of typically far-off USDA slaughterhouses. That regulatory stranglehold on meat processing has real-world consequences, because only meat processed at these USDA-approved slaughterhouses may be sold commercially in the United States. What’s more, when a food-safety violation is found at one of these facilities, the USDA can order meat from all sources—regardless of its safety—to be destroyed. That was the case in the California example I discussed in my column.</p>
<p>As I also noted, a growing demand across the country for increased food choices, such as local, grass-fed beef, is being suppressed by the dearth of USDA-approved slaughterhouses. While it’s true that meat currently may be processed at “custom” facilities that are not certified by the USDA, the sale of such meat is severely restricted.</p>
<p>So just what is the PRIME Act, and why do we need it? As Rep. Massie told me by phone this week, the bill is intended “to enable local farmers to sell their products to local consumers without all of the red tape and expense [posed by] the federal government.”</p>
<p>In place of that red tape, the simply worded, three-page PRIME Act would let states set their own standards.</p>
<p>Rep. Massie, who with his family raises cattle on his Kentucky farm, knows the impact of USDA processing rules better than most.</p>
<p>“I’m a beef farmer myself,” he tells me, “and when I take my animals to be processed, I drive past a custom facility three miles from my house and travel three hours to a USDA facility.” This is common. In talking with farmers and ranchers, it’s a story I hear time and again.</p>
<p>As Rep. Massie explains, the facility certification process is expensive and challenging. Something as trivial as the diameter of a drainpipe in a concrete floor can make or break a certification application.</p>
<p>“The current custom-slaughter system doesn’t help farmers to succeed,” Rep. Massie says. As he tells me, the current system that allows farmers to sell beef that wasn’t processed at a USDA-certified facilities also creates several senseless hurdles for the small farmer and his buyers. First, Rep. Massie notes, the rules force farmers to sell off ownership shares in a live cow, rather than, say, selling the steaks and roasts from the cow. Typically, that means a consumer must buy a share of at least 100 pounds, even if they just want to buy a pound of hamburger. It also means consumers can’t choose to buy, for example, only steaks or only roasts. They’re bound to buy steaks and roasts, liver and ground beef. And they almost certainly are forced to buy the meat frozen, rather than fresh, as—speaking from experience—it’s near impossible to eat 100 pounds of fresh meat in a sitting.</p>
<p>This, Rep. Massie tells me, is “how the rules keep consumers from buying what they want from farmers.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the PRIME Act is resonating with farmers and advocates across the country.</p>
<p>One person who sees the possibilities of the PRIME Act is Wyoming State Rep. Tyler Lindholm (R). I <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2015/03/14/tremendous-victory-for-wyomings-bi-parti">interviewed</a> Rep. Lindholm earlier this year after he helped secure passage of Wyoming’s groundbreaking Food Freedom Act, which deregulated many food transactions on farms in the state, save those pertaining to most meat, as that still falls under the USDA’s authority.</p>
<p>“Needless to say, there's quite a few of us in Wyoming that will be watching this bill closely and doing as much as we can to ensure its passage,” Rep. Lindholm told me by email this week.</p>
<p>“Not only will this legislation fill in the gaps for Wyoming's Food Freedom Act,” he says, referring to the continuing involvement of the USDA in intrastate meat processing, “but it will open the door to opportunities for [a]griculture producers that they haven't had in decades.”</p>
<p>“Congress gave USDA jurisdiction over intrastate meat commerce in 1967 and the results have been a disaster,” says Pete Kennedy of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, in an email to me this week. “The local slaughterhouse infrastructure around the country has been decimated in the last 48 years. Passage of the PRIME Act will bring back the community abattoir and lead to a more prosperous local food system.”</p>
<p>The PRIME Act isn’t the first time Reps. Massie and Pingree have teamed up on a great food bill. In March 2014, the pair co-sponsored a pair of bills that would have legalized many sales of raw milk that are currently banned. Those bills, which I <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2014/03/29/house-raw-milk-bills-give-hope-to-farmer/singlepage">wrote about</a> at the time, were “intended ‘to improve consumer food choices and to protect local farmers from federal interference.’” Neither bill passed, but their introduction established an important precedent for crafting bi-partisan food freedom legislation, a precedent that is reflected in the PRIME Act.</p>
<p>Given the visibility of this new bill, its bi-partisan appeal, and its growing number of co-sponsors, I’m optimistic the PRIME Act might just become law. Its passage would be an enormous victory for small farmers and consumers around the country.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/vjLVCZgtE54" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/archives/2015/08/01/prime-act-would-steer-meat-processing-inJoshua Oppenheimer's 'The Look of Silence' Confronts the Perpetrators of Genocidetag:reason.com,2015-08-01:2501552015-08-01T07:30:00-04:002015-08-01T07:30:00-04:00Todd Kraininhttp://reason.com/people/todd-krainin

An unforgettable documentary looks at the lasting scars of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965.

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<p>Imagine what it's like to confront the men who murdered your brother.</p>
<p>Now imagine that the murderers are some of the most powerful and celebrated members of society, free to boast about their crimes with impunity.</p>
<p>That’s the premise of Joshua Oppenheimer’s new documentary, <em><a href="http://thelookofsilence.com" target="_blank">The Look of Silence</a></em>. A companion piece to his previous film, <em>The Act of Killing</em>, <em>The Look of Silence</em> confronts the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide of 1965 from the perspective of its victims today, who are determined to learn the unspeakable truth about their past.</p>
<p><img alt="" height="338" src="http://cloudfront-media.reason.com/mc/2015_07/television.jpg?h=338&amp;w=600" width="600" style="float: right; border: 2px solid black;" /></p>
<p>Reason TV spoke with Oppenheimer about the psychology of genocide and how his camera is changing the course of a nation.</p>
<p>“Every perpetrator is human," he says about the killers in his new documentary, <em>The Look of Silence</em>. "And if we want to understand how human beings do this to each other, and how they live with what they’ve done, we have to try to understand them as human beings.”</p>
<p><em>The Look of Silence</em> opens nationally on July 31st.</p>
<p>Edited and hosted by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Zach Weissmueller and Paul Detrick.</p>
<p>Runs about 27 minutes.</p>
<p>Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV">ReasonTV's YouTube Channel</a> to receive notification when new material goes live.</p> </div>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reason/Articles/~4/_UeKP7HfPTQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/08/01/joshua-oppenheimer-look-of-silence